It's the tears of a clown for the Minus 5's Scott McCaughey.

"I mean," McCaughey says, "you listen to the Fellows records and, yeah, there's some funny songs, but there are plenty of songs that aren't very funny and that are just really good songs, you know. That part of what we did seemed to get overlooked and it made me a little frustrated for a while. And then I just went, 'Well, this is stupid to get worried about, because the songs are there for the people who want to hear them.' And the fact is, we're not going to change the way we were onstage. We're going to get up there and have a really great time, and some of it's going to end up getting pretty silly. And that's just the way it's going to be."

So how does it feel to lay bare one's soul onstage in a minute forty?

"You know, it is fun to yell out 'Aw shit man,'" he says. "I mean, I knew it was going to have both effects, and obviously I did not labor over the music. It was pretty much written on one string of guitar in about five minutes, you know. There isn't even a chord."

Chloe Johnson

The Minus 5: Welcome to the gun show. Featuring (The
Gun Album), that is.